Intervention, Libya, and the Future of Sovereignty

Anne-Marie Slaughter, the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, previously the director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department and dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, writes today in The Atlantic regarding the significance of NATO's current intervention. Professor Slaughter (great name!) believes that "International law -- and the governments that bring it into being -- are (in) the process of redefining the definition of sovereignty"....

Wired: Gadhafi’s Loose Weapons Could Number a ‘Thousand Times’ Saddam’s

Wired Magazine's Danger Room section reports today on the perils that might potentially be lying out in the Libyan Desert, now that Gaddafi has been removed from power:

Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi spent decade piling up a huge stash of weapons like a crazy old lady hoarding cats. Ironically, rebel forces looted his arms depots to turn Gadhafi’s missiles and guns on their old master. But the ease with which the rebels were able to arm themselves points to their next massive problem: securing those weapons before they fuel a lethal insurgency or flood the global arms bazaar.

It’s a concern familiar to those who watched Iraq’s insurgency evolve. Saddam Hussein, like Gadhafi, amassed a vast array of conventional weaponry for defense against enemies both foreign and domestic. In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion in 2003, looters made off with tons of explosives from unprotected military arsenals, making arms available to a brewing insurgency. With the end of Gadhafi’s rule seeming nigh, arms control and human rights experts are paying close attention to the security of the country’s weapons stockpiles, fearing they could end up in the hands of a pro-regime insurgency or other militants outside the country.

Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, has spent time on the ground in Libya during the uprising. He tells Danger Room that “weapon proliferation out of Libya is potentially one of the largest we have ever documented — 2003 Iraq pales in comparison — and so the risks are equally much more significant.”

Many in the West worry about the remnants of Gadhafi’s chemical-weapons program and shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles. However, Bouckaert says it’s Libya’s vast arsenals of low-tech gear like artillery shells and Grad missiles that are most likely to be fashioned into insurgent weapons, such as improvised explosive devices. The Libyan military certainly has plenty of them. Only a few months into the war, thousands of 122-mm Grad rockets were found stashed in abandoned bunkers in eastern Libya. “If Gadhafi loyalists decide to mount an Iraqi-style insurgency, they have access to a thousand times the explosives that the insurgents in Iraq had,” says Bouckaert.

Libya’s mines are also useful as weapons in a possible post-Gadhafi insurgency. Precise estimates of just how many mines Gadhafi’s forces have accumulated over the years are hard to come by. For their part, rebels estimate that pro-Gadhafi forces have already laid tens of thousands of the device to halt rebel movement.

Human Rights Watch has documented a number of different types of mines in Gadhafi’s stash. Libyan military forces have scattered Type 84 Model A anti-tank mines near Misurata. A particularly nasty weapon, the Type 84 can be loaded into 122-mm rockets, which scatter them across a wide area. On the ground, its magnetic fuse detects vehicles overhead and when detonated, fires a shaped metal charge upward. Amnesty International has also found T-AB-1 (AP) mines used in the area. The anti-personnel mines are mostly made out of plastic — meaning they’ll be hard to find with metal detectors.
In April, the representatives of Libya’s rebel movement, the Transitional National Council, pledged not to use land mines and to destroy any that came into its possession. But enforcing that pledge in a post-Gadhafi Libya will require coherence and discipline across the coalition of rebels — something that has at times proven difficult for the fractious grouping.

Then there’s Gadhafi’s higher-end weapons — including some that keep U.S. homeland-security experts awake at night. Libya is home to plenty of man-portable air-defense systems, or ManPads, which terrorists tried to use in 2002 to shoot down an Israeli passenger plane. Some newer, higher-flying missiles like the SA-24/Igla-S have also been spotted in Libyan military hands. But as Danger Room pal Eli Lake reports, the bulk of Libya’s arsenal is comprised of older, first-generation systems like the SA-7. They may not be the most-frequently used system in the event of an insurgency, but they are particularly worrisome in the wrong hands.

Fortunately, possession of a ManPads missile, alone, isn’t necessarily enough to take down an airliner. ”While the basic operation of a ManPads is fairly simple, using them effectively is not.  It requires some training and knowledge of the system’s capabilities,” says Matt Schroeder, director of the Arms Sales Monitoring Project at the Federation of American Scientists. That applies especially to older missiles like Libya’s SA-7s. Moreover, Schroeder adds, the missile systems have a shelf life, after which they begin to degrade. They could also malfunction if Libya’s military (or subsequent owners) haven’t stored or handled them properly.

Unfortunately, the scale of Libya’s man-portable missile arsenal could offer illicit users a number opportunities to successfully hit an aircraft if no one secures the weapons. Africa Command chief Gen. Carter Ham (.pdf) told the Senate in April that Libya held “perhaps as many as 20,000″ ManPads missiles at the outset of the war.

Libya is still home to the remnants of its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs, though Gadhafi officially abandoned his efforts along those lines in 2003. Western officials are now worried about the security of a remaining 11 metric tons [12 U.S. tons] of mustard agent and 500 to 900 metric tons [550 to 990 U.S. tons] of uranium yellowcake still located in the country near Tripoli, according to the Associated Press’ Kimberly Dozier and Douglas Birch.

For the moment, though, talk of post-Gadhafi violence is slightly premature, insofar as Moammar is still around, and rebel control of Tripoli remains contested. Moreover, Bouckaert says that some of Gadhafi’s larger conventional-weapons stockpiles are still in control of regime forces in Sirt and Sabha.

Nonetheless, experts advise that common sense steps like a weapons-buyback program that exchanges cash for loose arms could help mitigate the proliferation threat. Even in the event a pro-Gadhafi insurgency doesn’t develop, Libya’s arsenals could still cause trouble by making their way to terrorists and insurgents in the region. Some reports already claim Libyan rockets have already been smuggled to terrorist groups in Egypt and Gaza.

UK recognises Libyan rebels, expels Gaddafi's London staff

The Guardian is just one of several newspapers today that carries the lead UK story regarding the ongoing conflict in Libya. This article reports on a significant shift in recognition by HM Government, with no small significance for Gaddafi's legitimacy and Libyan sovereignty:

Britain is expelling the Libyan chargé d'affaires and all eight remaining Libyan embassy staff in London after David Cameron and William Hague ruled that Libya's national transitional council (NTC) was now the "sole governmental authority" in the country.

The chargé was summoned to a meeting at the Foreign Office, where he was given three days to leave Britain. Other diplomats at the Libyan People's Bureau, in Knightsbridge – which has been under heavy police guard since the launch of the military campaign in March – have been told to leave over the course of the summer.

Hague announced the expulsions at a Foreign Office press conference on Wednesday as he invited the NTC to nominate an ambassador and other diplomats to take over the Libyan mission. The foreign secretary said: "The prime minister and I have decided that the United Kingdom recognises and will deal with the national transitional council as the sole governmental authority in Libya.

"This decision reflects the national transitional council's increasing legitimacy, competence and success in reaching out to Libyans across the country.

"Through its actions, the national transitional council has shown its commitment to a more open and democratic Libya, something that it is working to achieve in an inclusive political process. This is in stark contrast to Gaddafi, whose brutality against the Libyan people has stripped him of all legitimacy."

Hague said Britain – which has temporarily closed its embassy in Tripoli – now runs its largest diplomatic mission in north Africa after Cairo in the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi. This will be designated as an embassy if the NTC requests an upgrade.

The decision to recognise the NTC as sole governmental authority led to the unfreezing of £91m in UK assets belonging to the Arabian Gulf Oil Company, a Libyan oil firm under the NTC's control. Foreign Office sources said the assets were unfrozen after the NTC gave assurances that the funds would be used to purchase fuel and not arms, which would be illegal under UN security council resolutions.

There's a video of the announcement as well...

Economist: Responsibility to protect - The lessons of Libya

Outsiders had good reason to intervene in Libya. But their cause may suffer from it.

So fears The Economist newspaper today in a useful article reviewing the ongoing intervention in Libya by NATO forces:

For those who back muscular humanitarian intervention, both the words and deeds of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi provided absolute moral clarity. “Come out of your homes, attack [the opposition] in their dens,” he told his supporters on February 22nd. He called the protesters “cockroaches” and “rats” who did not deserve to live: language chillingly reminiscent of the broadcasts of Radio Mille Collines, which spurred on the perpetrators of Rwanda’s genocide in 1994.

As he spoke, his forces had set their sights on Benghazi, their adversaries’ stronghold. According to Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, government forces had already killed 233 people in the preceding week. A bloodbath beckoned, in a city of 700,000 people. The United Nations Security Council invoked a fateful formula, urging the regime to meet its “responsibility to protect” its people. On March 17th the council, “expressing its determination to ensure the protection of civilians”, ordered air strikes.

That set the stage for the first full-blown test of a principle that the UN adopted in 2005 and has been refining since. The doctrine of “responsibility to protect” (R2P) holds that when a sovereign state fails to prevent atrocities, foreign governments may intervene to stop them. Human-rights advocates say it saves lives. Sceptics see it as too easily misused to be useful: a cover for imperialism, or even an incentive to kill (because even if a massacre is not looming, an unscrupulous warlord might be tempted to engineer one against his own people to spur outside support).

Previous uses of R2P have been solo ventures. In 2008 Russia used it to justify attacking Georgia, and France cited it after the cyclone in Myanmar, implying that humanitarian aid might have to be brought in by force if the regime persisted in stonewalling (it backed down). But before this year, no mission had been authorised by the UN Security Council that so explicitly cited the new principle.

At first it looked likely that the doctrine would either triumph or die in Libya. But two months and thousands of air strikes later, war’s messy reality has merely hardened views on both sides. On one hand, the decision to go to war was made in good faith at a time when the risk of massacres seemed real. As Mats Berdal, a professor at King’s College London, points out, the world’s leading powers had good reason to think they were “avoiding a Srebrenica”—the massacre of Bosnians which UN forces failed to avert in July 1995.

But as the war drags on and NATO strikes more widely, sceptics also feel their case has been bolstered. “For those of us who feared that R2P was just a warrant for war, our fears have been vindicated,” says David Rieff, an advocate-turned-critic.

Responsibility to protect gained ground after ghastly mass killings in the late 20th century, including massacres by the Khmers Rouges in Cambodia in the 1970s; the use of chemical weapons in Iraq in 1988; and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. In 1999 NATO unleashed an air war, without a UN blessing, to stop a Serbian campaign in the province of Kosovo. It argued that the need to protect civilians was an overwhelming moral imperative. The UN gave a sort of retrospective blessing by endorsing an international tutelage for the territory, led by Bernard Kouchner, a French pioneer of humanitarian intervention.

But the terrible civil war in Iraq that followed America’s invasion in 2003—portrayed as intervention against tyranny—shrivelled support for the doctrine. A possible result of that may have been hesitancy in intervening to stop the Sudanese government’s genocide in Darfur.

Seeking to restore liberal hawkishness’s good name, a group led by Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister, pushed the UN’s 60th anniversary conference in 2005 to endorse the idea that the world has a “responsibility to protect” civilians. Eventually 150-plus countries agreed to allow armed intervention through the Security Council “should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”

So much for the theory. What about the practice? Colonel Qaddafi provided an all-but-unique test. Regional leaders loathed him and readily dumped him. The Arab League’s support for the intervention stopped Russia and China wielding their vetoes. And the concentration of the rebels in the east, combined with flat desert terrain, at first made the regime’s forces easy bombing targets. “The stars were well and truly aligned in the Libya case,” says Mr Evans. “All the criteria were satisfied.”

The immediate goal of protecting Benghazi from massacre was achieved within days. Having destroyed Libya’s air defences, Western bombers and missiles pummelled the advancing troops into a speedy retreat.

Harder decisions followed. Libya’s army continued to shell other rebel-held cities, and its snipers were plainly targeting civilians. Protecting all Libyans, not just those in the east, would require the end of Colonel Qaddafi’s rule—an outcome that both Western and Arab governments had already called for. NATO stepped up its military campaign, bombing retreating columns as well as advancing ones, and attacking command-and-control centres frequented by Colonel Qaddafi and his family. On April 30th an air strike killed one of his sons. The line between curbing atrocities and an air war for regime change blurred—though a land operation is ruled out, for the moment.

Both sides of the debate will eagerly cite Libya the next time mass murder seems imminent. It shows that a modest dose of air power can save lives; but also that the rhetoric of civilian protection can be stretched to justify a creeping mission. Power politics decides which lives get saved, and which policy aims triumph.

Mr Rieff decries a “two-tiered system of interveners and intervened upon”, where the “old imperial powers” make the rules. But which powers exactly? The Libyan vote passed only because non-Western Russia and China withheld their Security Council vetoes: all but unimaginable until recently. Both countries are now getting cold feet, claiming misuse of the resolution’s elastic language. For different reasons Mr Evans bemoans excess zeal too: he wants to preserve the purity of R2P, and fears an interpretation that allows for “all-out aggressive war”. A lot rides on this war—and not just for the Libyans.

Libya, Côte d'Ivoire: Sarkozy's motives under intense scrutiny

Analysts disagree on what drives France's interventions in Afghanistan, Libya and Ivory Coast

The Guardian today has an interesting article looking at the analyses of possible motivation behind France's new-found urgency to intervene around the world:

As French forces take part in three different wars for the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, President Nicolas Sarkozy is under intense scrutiny at home and abroad over the motives for his foreign military expeditions.

With 4,000 French troops still in Afghanistan, French warplanes having fired the first shots in the western intervention in Libya, and with French tanks moving through the streets of Abidjan at the climax of Ivory Coast's civil war, there is little doubt that France's relationship with the rest of the world is on a new and more assertive footing.

What is less clear is whether the expeditionary surge is the result of a considered plan or a response to circumstances; whether it is driven by geopolitical factors or domestic political considerations.

An important consideration to make is whether any humanitarian intervention can be entirely altruistic—this article makes a refreshing change from the usual examinations of either American or British motives in foreign intervention. Somewhat predictably, opinion is divided:

At home, Sarkozy has been accused of using war for domestic ends. Mustapha Tossa, a French-Moroccan journalist wrote on the news website lepost.fr: "This sudden passion of Nicolas Sarkozy for military operations raises numerous questions: over and above the political explanation that suggests the president of the Republic wants everyone to forget the failings in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, suspicious voices are raised suggesting he wants to use international [affairs] to conquer what he has lost at home."

Jean-Marie Le Guen, a Socialist MP said: "There is a little bit of [George] Bush in Mr Sarkozy", adding that the president had "a habit of using force before politics without truly taking into consideration the current and future political consequences."

Richard Gowan, an analyst at New York University's Centre on International Cooperation argued, however, that rather than hurtling into a third conflict, Sarkozy had been excessively cautious in Ivory Coast.

"I don't think you can say the French approach has been zealous. The French tried to avoid firing a shot," Gowan said. He pointed out that in 2008, Sarkozy overruled his then foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who wanted to send troops to eastern Congo. This time, Gowan said, the ghosts of the past could not be ignored.

"However much he might be criticised for acting, the consequences for inaction would have been much worse. To be accused of colonialism is one thing. To be accused of a second Rwanda is quite another."

Telegraph: UN air strikes show West's new appetite for military action

An article published yesterday in The Telegraph by NY correspondent Jon Swaine demonstrates that any textbook is only truly up-to-date on the day it is submitted to the publisher:

The UN air strikes in Ivory Coast suggest Libya was no fluke: the West's appetite for military action has recovered robustly from the diplomatic trauma of the Iraq war.

After a brief honeymoon following the successful mission to protect Kosovo in 1999, it seemed the Blairite era of "liberal interventionism" had been buried along with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

The chaos after the steamrollering of the UN Security Council by Tony Blair and George W. Bush in 2002-03 seemed likely to usher in a new period of isolationism.

Barack Obama swept to power in 2008 on a wave of anti-war sentiment, while David Cameron entered Downing Street last year insisting that the West "can't drop democracy from 40,000ft".

Yet the past three weeks have found the council – this time with a less noisy Anglo-American wing – willing to pass stunningly powerful resolutions allowing missile strikes against murderous leaders.

Both resolution 1973 on Libya and resolution 1975 on Ivory Coast give external forces the authority to take "all necessary" measures to protect civilians from violence – practically a carte blanche.

A Western diplomat at the UN last night said the resolutions showed members were taking seriously the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine, adopted in 2006, promising "timely and decisive action" against atrocities.

"TV pictures and the threat of humanitarian catastrophe have made people not want to wait for massacres to happen, as in Rwanda," he said, in language strikingly reminiscent of the Blair-Clinton era.

The diplomat said that crucial in both cases had been the endorsement of action by the respective regional authorities – on Libya, the Arab League and on Ivory Coast, Ecowas and the African Union.

"It's very difficult if you're Russia or China to say 'no' if the Arabs and the Africans themselves are saying 'yes'," he said.

Also important has been the belligerence of Paris. The site of the Chirac-era "Non!" has become gung-ho, ensuring military – and symbolic – backing from the European mainland.

While Mr Obama has stayed almost invisible, the domestically embattled Nicolas Sarkozy has taken personal "ownership" of both interventions, rushing out his statements before anyone else.

It may not last. "There will be a price to pay for rushing these things through," the diplomat said. "The Indians are very unhappy and agreed only reluctantly."

But for the time being, the "something must be done" attitude of the late 1990s – and talk of a single-willed "international community" – has made a surprise return to New York's Turtle Bay.

New Statesman: Ethical dimensions of interventionist foreign policy

John Stuart Mill (lived 1806-1873)

Jason Cowley in today's New Statesman has an excellent article pointing up the dangers inherent in the idea of liberal intervention—such as we have seen in Libya today.

Cowley suggests that an essay by the key liberal thinker John Stuart Mill, first published in 1859, offers keen insight into the thinking behind the west’s UN-backed air strikes...

Offering an argument against this particular intervention, Cowley joins the long-dead Mills in doubting the necessity, the utility and the altruism in going to war against the Gaddafi regime:

The art of successful foreign policy is the art of measuring competing objectives; of knowing when to intervene (as in Kosovo in 1999 and Sierra Leone in 2000) and when not to (Iraq in 2003). Under Tony Blair, liberal interventionism itself became a kind of absolutist dogma. For Blair, there was a "moral obligation" to intervene "to make the world better". Emboldened by the success of his action in Sierra Leone to defeat the militias that had laid waste to an entire nation, and the Nato-led assault on Serbia during the Kosovo war, Blair wrongfully supported the Americans in their illegal war in Iraq. The inconsistencies of his positions abounded. Why intervene in Iraq and not in, say, Iran or Darfur? Similarly, why now should we intervene in Libya and not in Yemen, where civilians are being murdered by an autocrat every bit as repugnant as Gaddafi?

Perhaps we should turn to the great liberal philosopher J S Mill for help. In 1859, writing against the backdrop of the Crimean war, the Indian mutiny and the construction of the Suez Canal, Mill published an essay titled "A Few Words on Non-intervention", still one of the best I have read on the subject. Mill was not opposed to all foreign adventurism. As a servant of imperialism, he believed in the "civilising" mission of the British empire, but he set limits on when a state should intervene in the internal affairs of another, especially during a civil war or revolt. Mill was conscious that any foreign intervention would be viewed from the outside as an act not of humanitarianism, but of cynical self-interest. It's all about the oil! He believed that if a people did not have "a sufficient love of liberty to be able to wrest it from merely domestic oppressors, the liberty which is bestowed on them by other hands rather than their own, will have nothing real, nothing permanent".

Mill continued: "When the contest is only with native rulers, and with such native strength as those rulers can enlist in their defence, the answer I should give to the question of the legitimacy of intervention is, as a general rule, No."

No people, Mill thought, "ever was or remained free, but because it was determined to be so . . . If a people - especially one whose freedom has not yet become prescriptive - does not value it sufficiently to fight for it, and maintain it against any force which can be mustered within the country, even by those who have the command of the public revenue, it is only a question of how few years or months that people will be enslaved."

Unlike in Sierra Leone, where militias were supported by an outside agent - the Liberian warlord Charles Taylor - or Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians were struggling against the aggression of a Greater Serbia, the struggle of the Libyan rebels is against a native ruler. How long would they have been prepared to continue the freedom fight? We shall never know, because of the haste with which the western powers have rushed to intervene as they seek to police the earth, ghosts orbiting forever lost.

A useful article, providing important reasoned balance in the current intervention debate and the practical application of liberalism as an approach to global politics. Take the time to read the whole piece!

Economist Daily Chart: Behind the Big Push (Libya)

France and Britain led the diplomatic push for military action against Libya. The Arab League's vote, on March 12th, to call on the United Nations to enforce a no-fly zone was crucial in securing international legitimacy. The Americans were initially hesitant but were eventually won around. So much is familiar to observers of the unfolding Libya story. But what of the other diplomatic players? Why did China and Russia, both of whom are traditionally hostile to military intervention in sovereign affairs, abstain in the UN Security Council vote authorising action? Why did David Cameron work so hard to bring the South Africans on board? And just what are the Turks up to? The Economist's interactive map explains:

Guardian Comment: Kosovo - a template for disaster

David Gibbs in The Guardian's Comment is Free section argues today that the idea that Kosovo is a model for humanitarian intervention in Libya is based on a series of myths...

This is important reading for us as the NATO bombing of Serb forces in Kosovo to protect ethnic Albanians in the late 1990s is often cited as a successful example of humanitarian intervention. Current events in Libya are heightening the debate over the use of the R2P (Responsibility to Protect) doctrine. There are also long-held concerns as to just how effective just air power can be in resolving issues over the long term.

An introductory excerpt:

As they weigh up whether to support the attack on Muammar Gaddafi's regime, some western commentators are taking comfort from the 1999 Nato air war against Serbia, which is widely viewed as a successful humanitarian mission that protected Kosovans from Serbian aggression. Moreover it was done at low cost to the intervening powers, who suffered no combat casualties. And ultimately it led to the ousting of Serbia's villainous leader, Slobodan Milosevic. The Libya intervention, it is hoped, will have a similarly positive outcome.

In reality, Kosovo presents little basis for optimism with regard to Libya. Its success is based on a series of myths.

UN Security Council Resolution on Libya: key points

The Guardian today features a convenient outline of UN Security Council Resolution 1973, authorising action to protect Libyan civilians from the actions of the Muammar Gaddafi regime:

• The resolution expresses the UN's "grave concern at the deteriorating situation, the escalation of violence, and the heavy civilian casualties", condemns "the gross and systematic violation of human rights, including arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture and summary executions" and says the attacks against civilians "may amount to crimes against humanity" and pose a "threat to international peace and security".
• A no-fly zone is "an important element for the protection of civilians as well as the safety of the delivery of humanitarian assistance and a decisive step for the cessation of hostilities in Libya".
• It "demands the immediate establishment of a ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians" and "that the Libyan authorities comply with their obligations under international law ... and take all measures to protect civilians and meet their basic needs, and to ensure the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian assistance".
• It authorises UN member states "to take all necessary measures [notwithstanding the previous arms embargo] to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory''.
• It requests the co-operation of the Arab League member states in the previous measure.
• It decides to "establish a ban on all flights in the airspace of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in order to help protect civilians", exempting humanitarian flights, and authorises member states and Arab League nations "acting nationally or through regional organisations or arrangements, to take all necessary measures to enforce compliance with the ban on flights".
• It calls on member states to intercept boats and aircraft it believes may be taking arms and other items banned under the previously passed UN embargo and includes "armed mercenary personnel'' in that category – telling members states to "comply strictly with their obligations ... to prevent the provision of armed mercenary personnel to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya''.
• Member states should ensure domestic businesses "exercise vigilance when doing business with entities incorporated" in Libya "if the states have information that provides reasonable grounds to believe that such business could contribute to violence and use of force against civilians".
• It requests that the UN secretary general creates "a group of up to eight experts" to oversee the implementation of the resolution.

 UNSC Resolution 1973 represents an important current example of the Security Council in operation.

Details of Resolution are additionally summarised on Wikipedia.

Guardian: A no-fly zone over Libya? The case for and against

As the UN Security Council currently debates the issue, Julian Borger in a balanced article appearing in The Guardian today looks at the arguments for and against implementing a no-fly zone over Libya.

Definitely worth a read for our most current example of (possible) intervention! Particularly useful for those studying Global Issues is the article's exploration of arguments concerning the notion of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and R2P, while providing some historical background as to how the doctrine developed.

Commentary: What if Qaddafi Wins?

Seasoned Middle Eastern observer Michael J. Totten makes the case for some form of Western intervention in Libya in an article published today in Commentary magazine:

If something doesn’t change soon, Muammar Qaddafi will kill his way back into power over all Libya’s territory. His forces are retaking rebel positions. The opposition is crumbling. And it looks like the United States and Europe will stand back and just let it happen.

This isn’t the first time an Arab tyrant has made a startling comeback after an uprising nearly swept him away. Saddam Hussein lost control of most of Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, but tens of thousands of dead bodies later, he was firmly and ruthlessly back in the saddle.

There are good arguments against getting involved. Not even the most hawkish interventionist would have chosen a war against Qaddafi a month ago. There aren’t many worse human-rights abusers out there, though there are some. And there are certainly countries where the West has more national interests at stake, the most obvious being Iran. But let’s not pretend there won’t be consequences beyond the shores of Tripoli if Qaddafi butchers his way back to Benghazi.

He’ll emerge meaner and more isolated than ever and hell-bent on revenge. We can forget about going back to the status quo ante when his relations with others were more or less “normal.” Whatever reluctance he felt against acting out will be eroded, if not lost entirely, now that he knows the West has little appetite to move against him, even when he is cornered and at his most vulnerable.

If the only Arab rulers to be deposed by revolution are the nominally pro-American “moderates,” while the mass-murdering state sponsors of terrorism hang on, change indeed will be coming to the Middle East and North Africa, but it won’t be the change we were hoping for. One thing, however, will not have changed an iota: the Middle East will be governed by violence just as it always has.

If the Caligula of North Africa survives by fighting to the death and prevailing, he will surely inspire the other hard rulers to take the same strategy, especially after the humiliating and mostly nonviolent defeats of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Ben Ali. The killers of the resistance bloc — Iran’s Islamic Republic, Bashar al-Assad’s Baath Party in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza — won’t likely be overthrown by peaceful demonstrations but by massive internally  or externally driven wars.

Guardian: Soft power best way for West to intervene in Libya

Simon Tisdall in today's Guardian reviews the various "hard power" options open to a West confronted by growing evidence of the Libyan regime's treatment of protesters and rebels. In his opinion, none are satisfactory, leading to a conclusion is the only viable alternative that will have long-term and less-damaging (to the West) results...

Hard power possibilities: no-fly zone; targeted missile strikes; arms drops to rebels; covert operations (including special forces)...

The remaining, simpler options are easily the best – and easiest to choose. They include co-ordinated international diplomatic efforts to talk to opposition leaders, build personal and political ties with the Benghazi council, advise on organisation and outreach as rebel-held territory expands, and help create a roadmap towards a post-Gaddafi, democratic future. Soft power options also involve stepping up immediate humanitarian relief operations and evolving plans for long-term development assistance.

....

Meanwhile, spreading the word that western countries are there to help, not to take over or subvert the revolution, is vital. Gaddafi has been using propaganda to great effect. A media counter-offensive is overdue. Such methods take longer and are less dramatic than other options. And they must sometimes be combined with "hard power", for example to protect humanitarian transport corridors with air power. But because they are non-confrontational and must be negotiated they have a greater chance of achieving lasting change.

This represents a useful article for A-Level students trying to understand the difference between "soft" and "hard" power in the modern world.

Read the whole thing.

The main Wikipedia article for Muammar Gaddafi (Arabic: معمر القذافي‎) has a useful diagram showing the various permutations possible when transliterating his name from Arabic script / pronunciation into English:

New Republic: Tyranny, the West, and the Rest

This morning, Josef Joffe in The New Republic asks in a single brilliant article: "Why is everyone acting so shocked about Muammar Qaddafi’s crackdown?":

When Casablanca’s corrupt police captain Louis Renault closes down Rick’s Bar Américain to please Major Strasser, he huffs: “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” A second later, the croupier hands him a pile of money: “Your winnings, sir.” It took the West and the Rest 42 years to be shocked by what has been happening in Muammar’s Café Libyien. And it wasn’t gambling.

Now, it’s no more U.N. Human Rights Council for Qaddafi. Now, the International Criminal Court is investigating. Now, the E.U. is cutting off arms supplies and freezing bank accounts. Even the supple Swiss are getting religion, sequestering funds thought to belong Gaddafi and relatives. The U.N. Security Council, no assembly of choirboys, suddenly performs as the world’s conscience. It has imposed an asset freeze and a travel ban on the Qaddafi clan. Foreign ministers vie with one another in the shrillness of their indictment of a tyrant variously called “mass murderer,” “state terrorist,” or “psychopath.” “Outraged,” President Obama demands, “He must leave.” The U.S. and Britain are mulling “no-fly zones” to pin Qaddafi’s air force to the ground.

There is no reason to be “shocked, shocked.” Everybody—and that goes for the West as well as for Arabs, African, and Asians—has been able to see all along what’s been happening in Libya. But the Human Rights Council did not seem notice—perhaps because it was too busy passing 32 resolutions against Israel since its creation in 2006, almost half of the total it’s issued. The Council must have acted in a fit of dizziness when it elected Libya as a member.

The African Union—with around 50 members, depending on who is suspended when—anointed Qaddafi as chairman in 2009. This was the same Qaddafi who attacked Egypt in 1977 to demonstrate his displeasure with Cairo’s shift toward peace with Israel, and who invaded Chad in 1978 for a bit of territorial enlargement. In the 1980s, Qaddafi never met a terror outfit he didn’t like, supporting each and all with cash and arms—all the way to Ireland and the Philippines. He graduated from paymaster to puppet master with the PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie. Though he never assumed responsibility, Libya did offer to pay $2.7 billion in 2002 as compensation to the families of the 270 victims. Compared to this blood orgy, you might call the three American soldiers killed in a terror attack on West Berlin’s La Belle disco in 1986 an act of restraint.

And yet. The only time shock led to counter-shock was when Reagan ordered the bombing of Tripoli in 1986. The attack unleashed an uproar in Europe; this was worse than the slaughter of Libyan civilians, it was neo-imperialism! Four years earlier, a delegation of German Greens—idealists and pacifists all—had come to Tripoli to pay their respects to “Brother Leader.”

Yes, there were also economic sanctions, such as America’s Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996. But it didn’t keep American, let alone French and Italian, oil companies from doing business with Libya. There was simply too much cash in the country, such as a sovereign wealth fund worth $ 70 billion. Formalized in 2007, the fund, reports The New York Times,drew into its “orbit” the Great and the Good, “including the Rothschild family, Prince Andrew, the former European trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, the cream of corporate society in Italy” as well as a couple of big-time U.S. investors.

In 2009, while Qaddafi was in Rome, Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi praised him as “man of deep wisdom.” In 2007, French President Sarkozy’s “good friend” got to pitch his tent in the middle of Paris, presumably rent-free. But never mind. The visit brought in a deal worth 10 billion euros for a little nuclear reactor here, 14 Rafale combat planes there.

And now, he is our friend no more. “Treason,” the cynic Talleyrand pontificated, “is a matter of date.” “Unfriending,” too, we might add. Apropos of date: Britain and the U.S. came down really hard on Qaddafi in 2003, right after spectacular victory in Iraq. A few weeks later, Qaddafi came clean on his nukes, promising to scrap whatever he had and opening his country to inspections. The moral of this tale is that power talks. When there is the demonstrated will to use it, even the worst tyrants start purring.

Yet nobody told Qaddafi to stop being Qaddafi: an oppressor of his own people who would have made NKVD/KGB and the Gestapo proud. How is 2011 different from the 41 years before? The current mayhem does not bespeak a new quality; it is just more visible. So why the new outrage? Talleyrand might have mused: “Never go after tyrants before they falter, but hit them hard when they can’t hit back.” In German: Realpolitik beats idealpolitik; power and interest matter more than decency.

As we can see now, however, an excess of self-interest always begets an excess of self-righteousness. Unfortunately, to indulge in piety afterward is always easier than to walk that fine line between justice and expediency beforehand—in human affairs as well as in the life of nations. Nor will this ever end. Only in the movies do flawed heroes like Rick and Louis dispatch Major Strasser and go on to join the Free French Forces in Brazzaville.

Human Rights: Libya and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

The New York Times today published analysis of an important decision regarding events in Libya taken by the UN Security Council on Saturday night:

In response to Muammar el-Qaddafi’s continued assaults on civilians in Libya, the United Nations Security Council adopted a unanimous and historic resolution in an unusual Saturday night session.

It imposed an arms embargo on Libya, targeted financial sanctions and travel bans against Qaddafi, his family members and senior regime officials, and referred the situation to the International Criminal Court for investigation and potential prosecution of those involved in what was referred to as possible crimes against humanity.

In its statement condemning the violence, the Security Council included a critical reference to Libya’s “responsibility to protect” (RtoP) its own citizens from mass atrocities.

At the U.N. World Summit in 2005, more than 150 heads of state and government unanimously adopted a declaration on the responsibility to protect authorizing international collective action “to protect [a state’s] population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” if that state is unable or unwilling to protect its citizens, or worse, as in the case of Libya, if that state is the author of such criminality.

Since then, the doctrine has been only applied once — in the case of Kenya’s post-election violence in 2007-2008. And this is the first time it has been explicitly invoked by the Security Council regarding the situation in a specific country.

Do take the time to read the whole opinion piece. This decision constitutes an important  formal step towards Responsibility to Protect (R2P, or RtoP) by the international community and therefore represents an extremely valuable current example of the protection (potential, or otherwise) of human rights in North Africa for our Unit 4 responses.